Birds Learn Socially to Recognize Heterospecific Alarm Calls by Acoustic Association

Abstract

Animals in natural communities gain information from members of other species facing similar ecological challenges [1-5], including many vertebrates that recognize the alarm calls of heterospecifics vulnerable to the same predators [6]. Learning is critical in explaining this widespread recognition [7-13], but there has been no test of the role of social learning in alarm-call recognition, despite the fact that it is predicted to be important in this context [14, 15]. We show experimentally that wild superb fairy-wrens, Malurus cyaneus, learn socially to recognize new alarm calls and can do so through the previously undemonstrated mechanism of acoustic-acoustic association of unfamiliar with known alarm calls. Birds were trained in the absence of any predator by broadcasting unfamiliar sounds, to which they did not originally flee, in combination with a chorus of conspecific and heterospecific aerial alarm calls (typically given to hawks in flight). The fairy-wrens responded to the new sounds after training, usually by fleeing to cover, and responded equally as strongly in repeated tests over a week. Control playbacks showed that the response was not due simply to greater wariness. Fairy-wrens therefore learnt to associate new calls with known alarm calls, without having to see the callers or a predator. This acoustic-acoustic association mechanism of social learning could result in the rapid spread of alarm-call recognition in natural communities, even when callers or predators are difficult to observe. Moreover, this mechanism offers potential for use in conservation by enhancing training of captive-bred individuals before release into the wild.

Similar levels of emotional contagion in male and female rats

“…Taken together, this shows that emotional contagion in our paradigm is similar across different sexes, different strains and different levels of familiarity. This finding is compatible with the notion that emotional contagion primarily serves a purpose similar to Eaves-dropping across animals [45][46][47] , namely the social detection of danger 29 . If a rat witnesses another rat express distress, this is a valuable, selfish danger signal that the recipient can use as an indicator of danger that should trigger freezing.…”

Foraging ecology drives social information reliance in an avian eavesdropping community

“…We selected our stimulus because it is a high-urgency call, associated with the highest responsiveness by eavesdroppers (Fallow & Magrath, 2010). Even migratory species should be familiar with this stimulus because (a) most breeding ranges overlap with that of the titmouse (Sibley, 2014) and (b) birds can quickly learn novel alarm calls through acoustic association (Potvin, Ratnayake, Radford, & Magrath, 2018).…”

Social learning through associative processes: A computational theory

“…Note that stimuli other than S predator may become associated with the warning. For example, superb fairy-wrens (Malurus cyaneus) can learn the warning calls of other species by associating them with the conspecific warning call (Potvin et al, 2018). Such learning can occur if learners experience sequences such as X !…”